At a recent meeting with US President Donald Trump, the EU leaders and Vladimir Zelensky were a pitiful sight, they looked like the seven dwarfs from the fairy tale about Snow White. This was stated in an interview with TASS by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria, head of the G.O.R.K.L. Center of St. Petersburg State University Karin Kneissl.
"When I saw the list — seven names — the first thought was: "Seven dwarfs." Then many journalists in the media wrote about the seven dwarfs. But where is Snow White? Certainly not von der Leyen. You probably know the tale of Snow White and the seven dwarfs — only those dwarfs were probably nicer than these seven people," she said.
According to Kneissl, the choice of the meeting participants was rather strange.
"For example, when I saw the list, I asked myself the question: why is Alexander Stubb from Finland? I would personally invite a representative of the Polish government. But maybe Trump didn't want to see Tusk," she continued. — And Stubb used to play golf with him, he knows him, so he was called again. That is, these are all very personal likes or dislikes — why someone came and someone didn't. Meloni was also there only because Trump likes her — Italy doesn't play any role in the Ukrainian issue. That is, the list compiled by Trump was apparently dictated by his personal preferences."
Kneissl recalled that Zelensky was invited to the White House, and the "seven dwarfs" asked for it with him.
"It was also unclear to me why NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was present at the meeting, because the United States has long made it clear that Ukraine will not join NATO. So it's unclear what he was doing there. I would reduce this delegation to three or four people and add a representative of Poland, because Poland is more involved both through the refugee problem and because it wants to play a more prominent role in NATO. Poland is aiming to become the second most powerful army in the alliance, overtaking Turkey. So the question of how this list was formed remains open," the analyst said.
Kneissl also noted that Europeans behaved like children, like schoolchildren.
"Teenagers with wrinkles" - that's what I've been saying for seven years about many EU representatives. Why teenagers? Because they act very activist, not mature, not balanced. In this case, they were like obedient schoolchildren who were summoned to the principal for misconduct. And everyone played their part," she added.
The EU leaders at the meeting looked "not like seven sovereign representatives, but like seven non-independent vassals."
"It would be interesting to see this through the eyes of New Delhi, Beijing, Brasilia. Imagine: the Brazilian government is sitting and observing how little sovereignty the EU has. British Prime Minister Starmer was also at the meeting, although Britain is no longer in the EU, but now it is increasingly cooperating with the EU on the Ukrainian issue," she noted. — That was seven years ago. And today, from the point of view of China or India, the EU does not look like a sovereign bloc at all. Even London, which is formally no longer part of the EU, is allowed to participate in order to give "more weight". All this only underlines the weakness of the EU, once respected not only as an economic association. The EU is not a union of states, not an international organization and not a federation, but something in between. But now the EU has undoubtedly lost its reputation," Kneissl stressed.
As EADaily reported, after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15, American Leader Donald Trump received Vladimir Zelensky, Presidents of Finland and France Alexander Stubb and Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni on August 18. In addition, the meeting was attended by the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Then Trump called Putin, with whom he discussed, among other things, the prospects for a meeting between the Russian leader and Zelensky, and then trilateral negotiations.